According to preliminary results, water and air samples taken in the Pacific near the Kuril Islands and the Kamchatka Peninsula contained no hazardous radioactive isotopes

VLADIVOSTOK, October 27. /TASS/. There have been no negative impacts on Russia’s Far Eastern regions following the 2011 accident at Japan’s Fukushima-1 nuclear plant due to the fact that current have been taking potentially hazardous waters off Russia’s Far East, Yuri Lukyanov, the chief of an expedition that had examined potentially exposed areas, said on Monday.

According to preliminary results, water and air samples taken in the Pacific near the Kuril Islands and the Kamchatka Peninsula contained no hazardous radioactive isotopes. “The map of current in the Sea of Japan and in the northwestern part of the Pacific demonstrates that Fukushima coastal waters that might contain considerable portions of radionuclides are taken in the opposite direction,” Lukyanov, who is a lead specialist at the State Institute of Oceanography, told a news conference.

Final results of the expedition will be available in about six months and will be published in open sources.

On September 25, the Professor Khlyustin research vessel sailed off Russia’s Far Eastern port of Vladivostok on a mission to the Sea of Japan near the Kuril Islands to assess the aftermath of the Fukushima accident. Experts conducted spectrometric analysis of water samples from a depth of 200 metres and atmospheric air samples. While lying in the anchorage, experts took measurements of gamma rays, took daily samples of air aerosols, aquatic organisms, and carried out radiochemical works. Apart from that, they carried out meteorological monitoring taking measurements of air temperatures, atmospheric pressure and wind velocity.

Last week, Fukushima-1’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power, said that radiation levels in subsoil waters taken from a technical well near Fukushima’s 1st and 2nd power units reached record high indices. The content of cesium-134 and cesium-137 in water samples taken on October 17 was 267,000 becquerels per one litre.